Bottle sample at Dogbrick’s Eurostash II tasting on 12/12/09. Pours a cloudy lemonade yellow with a thin white head. Nose is apple skin. Flavor is lemon, granny apple skin and a malty finish. An odd beer, but a good change of pace from the pale lagers.

4oz draft at The Porter (yes, very small pour). The beer pours cloudy yellow with a thick white head. The aroma is grassy and hoppy with notes of lemon and grapefruit. The flavor is lightly grainy with a bready maltiness and very subtle residual sweetness. There is a big perfumy lemony bitterness at mid-tongue along with some perfumy and lightly fruity esters. There was a light note of anise - but it tasted more like esters from fermentation, not absinthe. The finish is dry and bitter with a light grainy malt character. The texture is medium-bodied and briskly carbonated. Overall, interesting but not worth the exorbitant cost.

Draft at redlight redlight. I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur of absinthe, but I’m definitely a fan, and being so I was very excited about this beer. While the absinthe is there, it is very subtle, which is maybe for the best, but I think if it was more upfront it wouldn’t hurt. The absinthe is probably more in the nose than the flavor. Despite that issue, it is a good golden Italian beer.

I popped the cap, its was not a gusher, but definitely had a strong carbonation that was working its way up the neck. Poured into the glass it had a large, strong, foamy, pillowy head. A rushing cavalcade of carbonation bubbles rush from the bottom of the glass straight into the cloudy of foam. Looks like rain in reverse, instead of falling down the rain drops retreat back to the cloud. As the head fades it leaves a foam mattress-like lacing on the side of the glass. All this is accompanied by (at first) a clear pale golden colored body. The clear color really makes the rushing bubbles a beautiful sight. With successive pours the body reflects the bottle conditioning by making the beer murkier. A very beautiful beer, really a nice job.

My only other experience with an absinthe beer was a disaster, an almost undrinkable saison made by a young brewery attempting to take a bigger bite than they could handle. This, on the other hand, is a much better experience. Actually, if it wasn’t for the description here I would not have even guessed this was spiced, particularly with absinthe. The aroma is very airy from the carbonation and the yeast. There is a touch of Belgian sweet maltiness and a light floral, leafy bouquet. But it is all very light and well melded. Taste follows the same formula but has an herbal, lightly bitter, leafy finish. That really rounds it off. Has just a touch of lemon character once the whole bottle has been emptied into the glass. A very natural, airy, easy-feel brew, feel to it. The mouthfeel is at first has a strong carbonation but with a little time and successive pours settles down a lot. And its actually light and very quaff-able, gliding down my gullet It evaporates from my palate and leaves a dry, faintly herbal, bitter leaf aftertaste.

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